Political class needs to shut up and listen (for a change)

22 January 2016

NormanL

There's little doubt voters aren't happy with the way the country is being run, and are eager for a change. There are a group of people, though, who simply can't quite grasp (or refuse to address) what's going on out in the heartland. They are members of the establishment. And at least one of them has a bit of advice for her colleagues: Shut up and listen to what people are saying...

...the more we – the political class – rant about why Trump, Cruz and Sanders aren't presidential material, the better the firebrands' poll numbers get.

The American people are pissed off, comrades. They're pissed off in a way that we can't relate to or imagine, because we are friends with the people they're pissed off at. Many of us, in fact, ARE the people they're pissed off at.

This leaves the inside-the-Beltway crowd with a choice: We can continue to freak out about whether voters are going to ruin the country (how elitist is that attitude?!), or we can try to find some respect for the voters and the message they are sending to this ridiculous, navel-gazing, money-driven, privileged, clique-ish, pompous, judgmental, ego-driven town.

That's going to be difficult. The political class is used to telling people in flyover country what to think, not listening to what they have to say.

But we wish our friends inside the beltway luck as they try to figure all this out.

What so frightens the conservative movement about Trump's success is that he reveals just how thin the support for their ideas really is. His campaign is a rebuke to their institutions. It says the Republican Party doesn't need all these think tanks, all this supposed policy expertise. It says look at these people calling themselves libertarians and conservatives, the ones in tassel-loafers and bow ties. Have they made you more free? Have their endless policy papers and studies and books conserved anything for you? These people are worthless. They are defunct. You don't need them, and you're better off without them.